Good news, Denver! We’re no longer in last place for mobile speeds. Then again, we’re still in the bottom 20 of the 125 most populated U.S. markets.

Researcher RootMetrics, which released its mobile report Thursday, said Denver moved from last place to 108th in data speeds — a sign that companies have invested in their Denver mobile networks, said Annette Hamilton, RootMetrics’ director.

How did Denver do?

Of the 125 markets, here’s how Denver’s mobile service ranked:

2016

2017

Overall performance

119

97

Network reliability

84

86

Speed

125

108

Data reliability

124

106

Call quality

87

80

Text quality

64

53

Source: RootMetrics

“Denver jumped 17 places overall — that’s huge. The fact that Denver improved in four of the five categories is not something we’ve seen before,” said Hamilton, whose independent research company sends drivers out nationwide to individually test indoor and outdoor cellular reception and data speeds of the four major mobile services. “I don’t know specifically what has happened, but clearly something has happened for the area to improve so much.”

Top 5 cities for mobile performance

In the first half of 2017, Denver saw an improvement in data speeds from all four major carriers from the prior year.

Sprint, in particular, has been investing in its network in Denver, which included ripping out the old network and replacing it with new equipment. That helped the company earn RootMetrics’ award for the fastest mobile service in town for the first half of 2017. Sprint’s mobile data speeds had doubled to median download speed of 19.6 megabits per second, compared with last year’s 9.81 mbps.

T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon all saw faster speeds in Denver, nearly doubling their year-ago data speeds. Verizon was the slowest, at 11.7 mbps.

And we could see even more improvements in RootMetric’s next report. In May, Sprint said it is continuing to improve quality and speed in Denver, thanks to a feature called the Magic Box. AT&T said it invested $100 million in the Denver metro area, which included upgraded LTE capacity at Coors Field and Pepsi Center.

Lansing, Mich., Chicago and Atlanta took the top three spots in RootMetric’s rank. In those regions, median data speeds were at least 20 mbps, with T-Mobile clocking in at a zippy 48.9 mbps in Lansing.

“I think there’s an ongoing improvement (by the carriers),” Hamilton said. “They look at how people are putting demands on the network, whether they’re making more data demands or call demands, and then they optimize for those things.”

​Tamara Chuang covers personal technology and local tech news for The Denver Post. She loves figuring out how things work and explaining them either through words, graphics or video. Find out how to contact her at dpo.st/tamara

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